An Advice for Wandurlust-ers

To people who want to lead a life full of travelling.

Spiti, India. I went to this Trans-Himalayan region recently on a sponsored two-month trip to create social media content for a travel company based out of that region, where I was also paid for the work I did for them.

You want to travel. Meet people. Try various cuisines. Relax in various landscapes. Or explore the hidden parts of this magnificent World. You want to travel more than you were ever allowed to. More than you ever thought about. This dream keeps growing exponentially at the appearance of every new picture from your traveller buddies on your facebook wall. You pack your bags, unpack them. You write your resignation, you erase it. You save money and then you spend it on things you feel bad about later.

But you’re sure about one thing, You want to travel. And not just go somewhere for a vacation, but see the world. Experience it. Live different lives you imagined yourself living in different countries. You want to have a life full of travelling. But it’s not always that easy.

There are two ways to go about it; one way is what you saw in Into the Wild, you leave the comforts behind, to just leave, and you go through all the challenges thrown at you, unlearning everything taught to you, to learn that life can be lived without the need of money to travel. Go ahead with it if you’ve the will to face all the difficulties as they might come, you might not find a mentor or any support, because it’s a different journey for everyone and it all starts by taking a step instead of just sitting and thinking. While you won’t be getting help from any quarters, being on yourself, while a scary thought, will help you experience a wide-array of difficult situations and make you more experienced, and give you a wider skill set that can help you out with odd-jobs, as you’ll travel to different region, and it might help you earn on the go. Even in regions without any internet, or any possibility of freelance work.

The other way is to earn money to travel, or get paid for travelling or doing a job that lets you travel. And understand that money is not evil, butit’s how you use it that defines you.

Now truth about many a jobs that let you travel is that you’re still not travelling the way you’ve seen others travel, you’ll have to perform certain tasks and have a deadline. The other way is to find someone who sponsors your travel and lets you go on a wonderful journey, where you’re also getting paid to travel. And while it sounds wonderful, it does require a lot of things.

Firstly you must offer something good enough for the sponsorship, you must prove that your travels are different from million others who are also travelling around the world. Since there are many other like you, out there, trying to find sponsorship, and they’ve great ideas in their head. So hit the internet, search what other travellers are doing, visit as many travel blogs/vlogs/travel pages as you can. See where do you stand, what can you replicate in your own style, or if that idea in your head is truly original.

Or else you earn your own money and travel.

So specially the students, or freshers, who keep asking me about a life of travel, the first advice I give is to complete your studies, do a job, earn money and use it to travel instead of spending it on useless luxuries. Build a unique travel portfolio and approach people, or wait for others to approach you.

And to build a travel portfolio, you don’t have to go running to the mountains or beaches or anything unexplored. Instead, go slow but go solid, explore your own city, your own surroundings, show your local region, cuisines, culture in your own style.

I live in Mcleodganj, India. And on most days when I’m not travelling anywhere outside, I roam around my immediate region and try to capture it with a different perspective. I had been to this particular spot many a times before I ended up clicking picture. And this made me realise that the same region has different character, which helps you warm up for the prospective journeys.

And here’s a thing, till today, content wins over the expensiveness of the equipment you’re using. So start with a free blog service, put your pictures, start with a phone instead of waiting for a DSLR, or your stories there. Start with an instagram or facebook page. Share it across. Ask your friends to help you. Because all you need at times is for your portfolio to reach that one person, who can help you out majorly. So keep trying.

But if you don’t want to head on this, slow but surer, way, then the path of incredible sacrifices awaits you. But in the end it might not be worth it.

But unfortunately that’s the thing, none of the options I mentioned above guarantee a successful travelling life. So will you still go ahead with it? If yes, then join the madness and travel, whichever way you can. And that’s when things start happening, when you take the first step instead of overthinking.

For you need to go out, do stuff, feel it, capture it, and share it. You can’t travel while sitting on your desk, or sleeping in your bed and dreaming. You need to make an effort, you need to understand that a life of a traveller demands equal respect, equal amount of hardwork, and you will need to wake up early after a late night, so you don’t miss the perspectives one get at the start of a new day. You’ll have to conquer your fear and do things you were afraid of doing earlier. You’ll have to rebel at times. Fight against your parents, friends, relatives and even your partner. But you’ve to realise that you’re doing it for yourself, for your dreams. And no dream is possible without overcoming all the challenges on your path. Because, fortunately, it’s the experience you attain through these challenges, which makes you a better person with a unique perspective that everyone in travel industry wants these days.

So here’s a thing, go out and explore whichever region you’re in. Mountains aren’t the only places a traveller goes to, so don’t waste time. Because you can’t lead a life of travelling by just thinking about it, or by being scared of what would happen if things go wrong.

You need to take those first steps.

Here’s something that always helped me when I had to go against my family to work towards my dream. I always said to myself that my family has always invested so much of money and their time in educating me, and the purpose of that education is to make me a self-reliant person, an independent thinker and give me the courage to take decisions. And if after all the education I can’t even decide for myself, if I can’t even fight for something that I feel is right, then it’s better that I’d have been illiterate, and made a better use of the time and money which was wasted for my education.